landlady
helped me. And that's what we've made of it. Don't you ask the captain
for any when he comes in--don't, there's a good soul. It isn't nice. We
had some accidents with it. It's been under the grate. It's been spilled
on the stairs. It's scalded the landlady's youngest boy--he went and sat
on it. Bless you, it isn't half as nice as it looks! Don't you ask for
any. Perhaps he won't notice if you say nothing about it. What do you
think of my wrapper? I should so like to have a white one. Have you got
a white one? How is it trimmed? Do tell me!"

The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on
her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was far too anxious
for the promised expression of Magdalen's decision to pay his customary
attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he dismissed
Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling her that she
had his full permission to "give it to the dogs."

"How does my little proposal look by daylight?" he asked, placing chairs
for Magdalen and himself. "Which is it to be: 'Captain Wragge, take
charge of me?' or, 'Captain Wragge, good-morning?'"

"You shall hear directly," replied Magdalen. "I have something to say
first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view besides
the object of earning my living on the stage--"

"I beg your pardon," interposed Captain Wragge. "Did you say, earning
your living?"

"Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions
to gain our daily bread."

"What!!!" cried the captain, starting to his feet. "The daughters of
my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to earn their
own living? Impossible--wildly, extravagantly impossible!" He sat down
again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury
on him.

"You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune," she
said, quietly. "I will tell you what has happened before I go any
further." She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find,
and with as few details as possible.

Captain Wragge's profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one
distinct result produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer's
offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady ascended
instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until
that moment.

"Do I understand," he inquired, "that you are entirely deprived of
present resources?"

"